"free-for-all bile-fest...festering turd of a thread..."

Oh really? Why shouldn't it be characterised instead by the warmly glowing vein of sweet reasonableness that has run through it from the start?

Face facts: giving a thread a title like 'More pretentious than Bellowhead' is inevitably going to attract people who like to lob stink bombs over the fence. And if you choose to become a public performer you implicitly accept all the reactions your performances are going to generate, good and bad. Some people deal with this nimbly and with dignity (take a bow Mr J Moray): they should teach this on the Newcastle Folk Degree , perhaps...

People have opinions, and are entitled to express them in language they feel comfortable with. Free speech – one each!, as Roy Harper used to say.

Somebody thinks Sam Sweeney is shit. No problemo, surely, amongst grown ups? I happen to think Sam is a man of awesome gifts, and not only because he lives up the road from me and was polite to me once. He can not only play drums and fiddle at the same time, he can also peel an orange and scratch himself between the shoulder blades, all without recourse to multi-tracking. Hear it all on his new live CD Eight Arms And An Anglepoise Back Scratcher, Mudcat Records CRAP1

And he's still only 12 and a half.

What threads like this also do is attract the likes of The Borchester Echo and Ruth Archer, who pop their heads round the door just to remind us why they don't pop their heads round the door any more. Interesting contrast. Ruth and Echo, as I understand it, are people who have a certain amount of power and influence on the folk scene, and seem to be easily outraged by those whose only power is to shout Yah Boo and run away. They take umbrage when musos they rub along with are criticised, but are happy enough to spray out quips like "acres of self-regarding wank" at people who aren't part of their charmed circle.

Y'know, over on the fROOTS forum posters have to use their real names and submit a bit of biog. Might be a notion that Mudcat could fruitfully adopt. It's hard to have an informed discussion when some posters know who other posters are and some don't. It kind of excludes newcomers, I think. And we might not end up believing every rude anonymous poster is a member of Bellowhead.

By the way, I am Catherine Foster. I'm wearing my arias as I type. Hope that clears everything up.